Use the Repository

For decades, US colleges and universities have been stuck in an endless loop of confusing decisions, policies, and emotions about student speech on campus. Whether speech is allowed, censored, or sanctioned depends on who has decision making power rather than campus-community norms that protect learning for students.

This simulation challenges students to confront the political and moral complexity of equitable distribution. Participants are placed on a task force at your university charged with allocating $1 million to address a campus issue of their choosing. Drawing on Deborah Stone’s chapters on Equity and Numbers in Policy Paradox, students must determine how to define the problem, select criteria for distribution, and justify their allocation decisions. The exercise highlights how classification, thresholds, measurement, and competing definitions of fairness shape policy outcomes. Students must not only design an equitable distribution plan but also develop an evaluation strategy using numbers to defend their decisions. During class debate, peers challenge their criteria, assumptions, and measurement strategies, requiring participants to revise or defend their approach. The goal is to move students beyond abstract commitments to fairness and toward a concrete understanding of how equity is constructed, contested, and measured in real policy settings.

This 90-minute simulation immerses students in the process of designing and organizing a social movement in order to understand how leadership structure, strategic goals, and differentiated roles shape collective action. Students are divided into two movement groups tasked with reviving the Occupy Wall Street movement in response to contemporary economic inequality. Each group operates under a distinct leadership structure—horizontal or hierarchical—and adopts either a reformist or radical strategic orientation. Within each movement, students assume one of three leadership roles: agitators, innovators, or orchestrators. These roles require participants to articulate grievances, develop actionable strategies, and coordinate collective efforts. The contrasting structures and goals create meaningful constraints that influence decision-making, participation, and internal dynamics. The exercise concludes with group presentations and a structured debrief comparing how leadership design and movement goals shaped outcomes. 

This project-based learning module engages undergraduate students in investigating sweatshops and labor exploitation within the fashion industry through hands-on data collection and analysis. Students visit high-end and mid-range retail stores to collect data on pricing, materials, country of manufacture, and brand information, then use Excel to analyze patterns and trends. Through their analysis, students develop evidence-based arguments about fair wages, ethical consumption, and the relationship between price and labor conditions. The module connects quantitative reasoning skills with civic engagement, preparing students to critically evaluate data-driven arguments about social justice issues. By formulating their own research questions and presenting findings, students practice the kind of inquiry essential for informed democratic participation.

This handout describes an in-class (or at-home) activity to help students understand how to use a civic and democratic approach to tackling an issue. The activity asks students to analyze the methodology, findings and results of a project and analyze whether the researchers employed a civic and democratic mindset to their research. 

This handout includes guidance and considerations for conducting community-engaged research and any research that has the potential to impact a community. It includes a useful table and recommended readings, a podcast, and a TED talk. 

This handout describes a two-part civic identity mapping exercise. It is useful in project work, in identifying areas of civic work that you are best suited for. This resource is useful for undergraduate students, graduate students, and professionals. 

This assignment asks students to choose news articles on a similar topic and from a similar time period and read them with a critical eye. The instructions direct students to an online interactive website that offers information on different bias among news organizations.  

This in-class exercise pairs well with the Civic Identity homework assignment. In this exercise, students assume a specific role within a community (government agency, private industry, general public, media, not for profit organization, etc.) and analyze the likely outcome based on the power differentials, perspectives, and access to/trust in media. The scenario involves an energy contract in a fictitious town.  

This case study considers the matter of congressional apportionment – how the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are allocated among the states.  The perspective is an historical one, using the text of the U.S. Constitution and data from past U.S. Censuses.  Although a hypothetical contested U.S. presidential election is used to frame the possible implications, all of the work for this case study is rooted in actual historical information and events.  The case culminates with a consideration of the 2000 U.S. presidential election.The case contains a number of historical vignettes that ask the reader to consider the decisions and interpretations made at the time.  An effort is made to place the reader, in terms of the information available to them, in the given historical situation.  This case should appeal to those with interests in history, political science, and/or mathematics.